Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Typical Wedding Speeches

Thereare three generally accepted speeches usual to a wedding reception theyare, bride's father's speech, the bridegroom's speech and lastly thebest man's speech. No further speeches are required although otherspeeches are permissible; it is not unusual for example for thebridegroom's father to give a short speech of thanks to the host andhostess for the occasion, or the bride to have a "best woman" give aspeech.

10 Speech Preparation and Delivery Tips

Should you decide to write your own wedding toast or persuasive speech, here are a number of ideas which may be useful in the preparation.

1. Keep it brief!2. Begin you speech with cinfidence and enthusiasm.3. Memorize the first three sentences.4. Try not to read your speech.5. Develop a theme6. Don't try to be someone your not.7. Use descriptive language8. Have a solid and memorable conclusion9. Research.10. Use appropriate infelction in your voice

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Common Sense Tips for Public Speaking

Here are a few tips you’ll want to keep handy when you’re juststarting out in public speaking. These aren’t anything out of theordinary and for the most part the points below are really commonsense. The idea here is that too often we forget common sense whenwe’re overtaken by anxiety, social phobia and fear of public speaking.That’s a reality for a lot of people who are just starting to speak infront of an audience and it’s also a reality for more seasoned speakerswho still find it challenging to overcome their fear of public speakingand stage fright.

Once again, these points are common sense, but you’ll still get a lot out of reviewing them:

1. Learn from people who have gone through the same experience.

2. Use sentences and techniques that have been tested.• Some structures are known to work better than others. Rely on what works!

3. Practice a lot!• This point can never be stressed enough.

4. Practice in front of a mirror.• Learn to integrate your own body language style to your words.

5. Record yourself and listen to your pronunciation.• This is an excellent way to speak with clarity.

6. Make sure you know your subject inside out.• Your audience will respect you if you are an expert and know what you’re talking about.

7. Let the audience know upfront that public speaking is not easy for you.• Some speakers may disagree with this, but many have embraced this idea.It might be more practical to use this technique in front of smalleraudiences – this works particularly well if you have to present awedding speech, as the audience is smaller and more forgiving. When youare drawing crowds of several thousands listeners, they expect you tobe a top speaker.

8. Know your stage.• You’ll want to visit the podium (and the room) before you speak to make sure you knowwhere to step and what to avoid. If anything is unsafe on that podium,you want to know about it before hand and not risk being embarrassed on stage.

10. Hire a specialist to take care of all technical considerations.• If you’re microphone doesn’t work, you don’t want to be caught on stagetrying to fix your own technical problems. Hire experts who can do itquickly. You should only have one focus – your audience.

11. Have handouts prepared just in case your visual aid doesn’t work.• For obvious reasons, you should check your Power Point presentationmany times to ensure that it works perfectly and there are no technicalglitches. But sometimes, the best intentions are just not enough.Always have photocopies of the handouts that can be quickly distributedin case anything goes wrong.

12. Don’t forget to interact withthe audience. This will not only make it more interesting for theaudience, but it will ease the pressure off of you.• If by any wild chance you get a question or comment that youcannot answer, simply be honest about it and let the audience member inquestion know that if they want to contact you directly you can try toget them an answer. If that question is really important to thataudience member, he/she will take you up on your offer. If the questionwas not that important, you won’t need to worry yourself much becausethe audience member will not purpose matters any further.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

A Quick Wedding Speech Outline

Here's a great article that give a nice basic outline for your wedding speech.

Wedding Speeches: A Quick OutlineBy Tom Antion

Wedding speeches are reserved for the most important members of the wedding party and closest family and friends.

If you are one of the ones expected or asked to do a wedding speech, then preparing is a must. Winging it just won’t cut it especially when your wedding speech will be on video from now until eternity.

Wedding speeches should not last more than three or four minutes. It reminds me of that famous quote by John F. Kennedy,

“Public speaking is the art of diluting a two-minute idea with a two-hour vocabulary.”

It’s actually much harder to do a short wedding speech than a long one which reminds me of another quote,

“It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.” --Mark Twain

You have to have an opening and closing. You probably want to throw in a story and at least one piece of humor. And it all has to make sense. Please, please, please don’t apologize for how bad you are as soon as you stand up, which reminds me of yet another quote by Kin Hubbard,

“Why doesn't the fellow who says, "I'm no speechmaker," let it go at that instead of giving a demonstration?” hahaha I love that one.

Here’s a quick outline for a wedding speech:Note: each one of the bullet points below could have many variations

· Opening – Could be comments about the lovely affair· Comments about the bride and groom· Story about your interactions with the bride, groom or both.· Humor- Pick something that applies to them and is appropriate · Closing – Something touching· Toast – Brief and touching or funny

You’ll rarely be the hit of a wedding because of your wedding speech and rightfully so. The bride and groom are the stars. But poor preparation of your wedding speech certainly could make you the laughing stock.

Remember, you are going to perform your wedding speech live, but you’ll be on video forever. Take the time to prepare.

Tom Antion is a speech expert and author of Wedding Speeches This immediately downloadable e-book gives complete wedding speech instructions and etiquette along with 200 pieces of wedding speech humor. Article Submitted by That Article Guy